Stone Cold
by hellafitzgerald
Summary: Cosima is an intern at a busy hospital. But it isn't her patients that are causing her problems. It's Stone Cold Delphine Cormier.


They say that the highest average stress levels in the population are in first year medical interns. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure if that's true: I mean, I feel like bomb disposal experts or like, the president, probably have it worse than me, but I can totally see where they're coming from. However many years of pre-med, then medical school, only to be dumped out on your ass straight into the middle of a hospital ward with nothing but a shitty 10 minute induction video and an ID tag that makes you look like Captain Jack Sparrow to show you're meant to be there. Two months of 20-hour shifts and it was getting sad how good I was at getting puke stains out of my scrubs.

Thing is, though, is even with an average of four hours' sleep a night and senior doctors fucking with you every shift and patients expecting you to be some kind of miracle-working shaman, I was having the time of my fucking life. I was actually helping people for the first time in my life, and it felt pretty fucking good.

I was always at my best when I was busy, and what keeps you busier than trying to keep 30 patients alive at any given time? I found myself starting to like working graveyard shifts. I liked the quietness of the halls, the way they would dim the lights slightly at night. I liked the shitty coffee that sat stagnant in the common room, the unbeatable rush of endorphins when my pager started beeping and I had to sprint like Forrest Gump to avert whatever new disaster had cropped up.

My enjoyment of my night shifts may also have had just a little to do with the other on-call intern who shared my timetable.

Delphine freaking Cormier.

Okay maybe it had a lot to do with her. the coffee tasted like piss.

I had been minority obsessed with her since I saw her at the intern induction day, rolling her eyes as the human wet blanket hospital legal consultant was begging us not to get sued. She was all long legs and button down shirt and indecently perfect curly blonde hair, and to tell the truth I was a little bit sunk just from that first look. The soft French accent that fell from her beautiful lips only served to pile rocks in my pockets. I was wholly, embarrassingly, stupidly smitten.

It was only when I introduced myself to her, all wobbly knees and sweaty palms, that I discovered that real life fallen angel Delphine Cormier was a raging bitch.

Ok, maybe not raging exactly, but like, definitely showing up somewhere on the bitch spectrum. She really had perfected the whole Ice Queen thing. As I shook her hand that day, all I got was a tight smile as she told me her name, then a smooth excuse to leave. No pleasantries. No small talk. Not even the customary disinterested vote of excitement at starting work as we nibbled on stale complementary cookies and politely sipped our piss-coffee.

It didn't change, either. Not even when some kid dropped out of the programme and our schedules got rearranged so that we shared two of our three night shifts.

From what I saw as we worked together, she was obviously an exceptional doctor. She was thorough and careful, but still about twenty times more confident in her ability as a doctor than the rest of us. She knew all the answers when the attending took us for rounds; I could tell by the way she bit her lip and looked down at her hands. She very rarely offered to answer unless she was called upon, though. Maybe that was just another part of her continued effort to avoid any and all human attention that came her way.

It was after a week or so of being on the same shift Mondays and Thursdays that I decided to try to crack her a little, to see if I could get that cold professionalism to budge even a little bit.

I found her in the room of a post-op patient who was still dead to the world. She was leaning over him, carefully peeling away the soiled bandages around his abdomen. I knocked a couple of times on the door and she looked up at me for a second with those huge brown eyes before silently returning to her work. I took that as an invitation to come in, because I sure as hell wasn't getting another one.

"Need any help?" I asked, trying to keep my tone light and cheery despite the fact that it was almost 2 AM and I was standing in front of the most gorgeous and terrifying woman I had ever met.

"I am fine, thank you," she said coolly as she removed the layer of bandaging and inspected the surgical wound carefully.

"Sure?" I prodded. "All my patients are chilling out at the moment and I know I get bored doing grunt work without anyone to talk to."

She didn't answer me. Just gently palpitated the guy's abdomen while I watched her awkwardly from the doorway. For some reason I took the whole standoffish thing as a bit of a challenge. I stepped further into the room and sat down on the bed next to the patient's ankles.

"So, you're French right? Cormier," I said, trying and failing spectacularly to imitate her smooth accent with the last word. She raised her eyebrow at that, no doubt vaguely appalled at the extreme un-Frenchness of it.

"Yes," she said. "My family is from a small village near Paris." It was the first time she had ever said more than six words to me out of choice, and I saw it as progress.

"So what made you move to America then?" I asked. "Was it the accessible healthcare for all and our exceptional gun control laws?"

I swear she almost smiled at that, but then her face closed off again. "A change in scenery," she answered vaguely.

"What-"

"Can you pass me that gauze?" She cut me off, and something in her expression, now hard and stony, dissuaded me from pursuing the subject any further. I handed her the plastic-wrapped bundle from the trolley at the side of the bed and she began to re-dress the wound.

I was about to ask her another question, to steer the conversation, whatever little there was, into territory that she would find more comfortable, but I was interrupted by the shrill beeping of my pager. I checked it and swore a little, standing up.

"I've gotta go," I apologised. Not that I thought she'd actually mind very much. "One of my guys' bloods have come back dodgy. I'll run into you soon, yeah?" That last part was pretty much just for me. To be honest at that point I wasn't sure if she cared at all whether I ran into her or not. She said goodbye to me politely, but I felt her eyes on me as I walked down the hallway.

And thus Mission Befriend Delphine was born.

Honestly after that it was barely even because she was so outrageously hot. I mean sure, it seemed like every time she walked towards me it was in slow motion with Jimi Hendrix playing, and sure, she must have had her scrubs specially tailored because _hot damn_ how is it possible to look that good in those bright blue potato sacks. But mostly it was just because she seemed… lonely.

You can be the strongest motherfucking lone wolf on the planet, but after a few months of fighting disease with your bare hands, of trying to out-smart death one day at a time, even the most solitary person in the world needs someone to talk to. And I was determined to be hers.

/

"What's up, Doc?" I tried to sound upbeat. She may not have shifted in her attitude during the many one-sided interactions we had engaged in over the previous few days, but this just might be the one.

"I am fine, Cosima," was all she said as she turned back to the clipboard she was filling out. Huh. Maybe this was't the one.

"Any interesting cases today?" I asked. I had noticed that she was often the most open when she talked about medicine. So far it had been the only topic I had been able to engage her with.

"Non," she replied without looking up from her paperwork. "Although I am only three hours into my shift and I have already had to change my scrubs twice."

I was slightly surprised at her sudden apparent willingness to chat. "Blood or vomit?" I asked with a sympathetic smile.

"One of each." She wrinkled her nose in a move I found almost unbearably cute. "I am hoping to find someone to urinate on me so I can complete the hat trick before my coffee break."

She said this completely deadpan, still looking down at her chart, and it absolutely slayed me. I laughed so hard I thought I was gonna cough up my spleen. Or something less gross that wouldn't ruin my chances with the hot blonde doctor. I could swear I saw a faint look of pride in her face as I caught my breath.

"Did you, Stone Cold Cormier, just make a joke?" I asked incredulously.

She smirked. "Jamais," she said airily, and with that she slotted the finished chart into its place in the filing system and left, walking down the hall without a glance behind her and leaving me staring after her watching the perfect sway of her hips, jaw on the floor, heart in my throat.

/

"So, you think that means she likes you?" Scott always had been a cynic, and his small smirk as he reached over the grimy cafeteria table to steal a handful of my fries proved that this occasion was no exception.

"Did you not hear me?" I asked, outraged. " _Complete the hat trick,_ Scotty!"

"Yes, I heard you the first time," he said. "Terrible imitation, by the way." I flicked a pea at him. "All I'm saying," he continued, "is that one joke after a solid week of your constant pestering dow not mean she likes you. She was probably just trying to get you to leave her alone."

"I reject that idea with contempt," I said stoutly. "I'm telling you man, the good Lady Frost is warming to me. I bet you she'll be at least, like, tepid by next month." Scott looked at me skeptically. "Ok fine," I conceded. "Maybe by the time I retire she'll smile at me at my leaving do though."

"Miracles can happen."

I flicked another pea at him. It hit the left lens of his glasses. "You're just saying this because you're scared shitless of her," I said.

Scott blushed a little. "Am not," he said. "I just think she's a little… mean and distant."

That made me laugh. "Are you sure it's not because she's like, indecently hot?"

If possible, he blushed even redder, his ears now turning vaguely pink. "Shut up," he muttered, stealing more fries.

Just as I was about to tease him about his inability to talk to any attractive member of the opposite sex, the object of our conversation walked through the cafeteria doors. We both watched her silently as she queued diligently for her food. Her hair was scraped back messily into a knot behind her head. there was a small dark stain just above the hem of her scrubs, and she looked like she hadn't slept in days. And still, as I looked at her it was like in those crappy movies where the camera slowly pans up to her face while the Carpenters are playing in the background, and she was absolutely perfect.

Damn, I had it bad.

She purchased a single green jello cup and walked through the seating area on her way to the exit.

"Hey Delphine," I managed to choke out as she passed by.

She did a tired little double-take, eyes fuzzy and unfocused. When my greeting finally registered with her, she gave me a tiny, tight smile and a small nod of her head before turning and continuing on her way.

"Yeah, you two are obviously best buds," Scott commented when she had left and I was still staring at the door she had walked through.

"Fuck off. At least I can speak to her. " That shut him up.

/

So I guess you could say it was going pretty well with Delphine. She didn't do that weary sigh whenever I came to talk to her anymore, and at one point during the next week or so she greeted me with a polite 'hello Cosima' as we were passing in the hallway before I even got a chance to say anything. It's the small victories, people. I began to see the joking incident as a turning point. That's what they always say, isn't it? 'Share body fluid humour, friendship inevitably follows', right?

Apparently not.

It was almost 3 AM on one particularly dreary shift. My time had been split equally between researching new drug plans for an old lady who was allergic to everything, and explaining to the guy with the gangrenous foot that prayer probably wouldn't be as effective a treatment plan as surgery. Complete shit-fest.

So seeing Delphine through the slightly yellowed glass of a hospital room after finally getting a small break in the flow of demanding patients was a pretty sweet piece of relief. Unfortunately it didn't look like things were going too well for her.

She was surrounded by a cluster of busy nurses, holing defib. paddles aloft as her lips moved frantically, listing instructions I couldn't hear. Everyone moved back suddenly and she held the paddles down on the patient's chest, and the body arched grimly as it was charged with searing electrical current.

Delphine looked at the flatlining EKG, then at her watch. A few more words, and she replaced the paddles and stepped outside the room. I'm not sure if she even saw me as she strode determinedly across to the door that led to the emergency stairwell.

I'm not sure exactly what it was that made me follow her. All past evidence warned me against disturbing her. If she was upset about the loss of this patient, she most likely wanted to handle it in the same way she handled everything: completely alone.

I guess it was something about the blankness of her expression, the dreaminess she seemed to have as she walked past me without seeing anything. So I went after her. I found her there in the cold of the concrete stairwell, leaning against a wall as she sucked blandly at a cigarette, staring straight ahead.

"Delphine?" I said. It was quiet, tentative, and I was glad when she rewarded me by turning her head, eyes meeting mine.

"Hello, Cosima," she said, and I could have sworn her voice was croakier somehow, but then maybe it was just the cigarette, which she took a drag from absently as she continued to stare at me.

"It's funny," I said, "I never had you thought of you as a smoker."

"You have been thinking of me?" She said dryly, and it was so out of the blue that I couldn't think of anything to say for a moment. She spoke again though, saving me. "I am French, Cosima," she said dismissively. "I appear to conform to the stereotype, non?"

Her face and tone were still so empty, so blank. It made me ache a little bit for her, for this isolation she seemed so determined to impose upon herself.

"You know," I said slowly, "I saw you back there, losing that patient." She remained expressionless, so I decided to just go for broke. "I just thought you might need someone to talk to. I mean, I get that you're not big into that, but I thought…"

I trailed off a little, looking at her slightly pleadingly. Please admit you need me. Because I think I might need you. Eventually I reached out and touched her elbow where it was bent to hold the cigarette to her lips. "It's nice to have a friend, in here," I said, and ay that she suddenly flinched back.

She recoiled from my touch or my words, almost like she had been burned, and she looked at me so intensely and her eyes were loaded with all these sentiments that I couldn't translate.

"Cosima." Her voice was surprisingly steady, given her sudden movements. She spoke soft and low, and her eyes burned into mine as she spoke. "I appreciate that you want to be my friend," she said softly. "You are very kind to me, and I know I have been… not as pleasant to you, but…" She paused, sighing slightly and biting her lip in that infuriating way that made me want to kiss her.

"I cannot be your friend," she said, and there was something like an apology in the way she said it. I opened my mouth to argue, but she interrupted. "I am afraid that I do not… Relationships are not something which I can do. I am sorry, Cosima. You really are a lovely person but… I cannot be your friend."

And then she flicked the cigarette butt into a bin and left, running a hand through her hair and not looking back at me once.

/

So that's how we ended up with me, two months into sharing a shift with Delphine Cormier, and no closer to befriending her than Scott is to turning into Captain Kirk. I don't know what it was that pissed me off so much about that speech in the stairwell, except for that she was, you know, literally telling me to leave her the fuck alone. Which is never a nice thing to year, not to mention when the person who's saying it to you is so really, really, ridiculously good-looking.

Either way, I listened to her. She didn't want to be my friend. So I stopped trying so hard. I still said hi to her whenever I saw her, occasionally asked her opinion on a patient if there was no one else around to help, but it was all basically heartbreakingly professional. It was weird as well, how much better she responded when I stopped trying to create any closeness in our relationship. It was like she felt safer when our association with each other was clear in her head: just colleagues. We worked together and that was it. Nothing more. She seemed more at ease, more comfortable with that, so that's how we continued.

It didn't stop me watching her, wondering at what seemed like an ancient loneliness behind her eyes. It didn't stop me thinking how beautiful she was, or wanting to be closer to her. It was just that now it was on her terms. She decided what we were, and in spite of my secret determination, we weren't friends.

/

Unfortunately, nothing good can last very long, and the tentative familiarity which we developed over the next few weeks eventually exploded in a beautiful storm of sparks.

As seems an appropriate setting for the catastrophe that was to happen that night, it was raining. You could hear the pummelling of water as it hit the flat roof of the hospital, and it fell in sheets past the dim of the windows.

In a rare lull in my duties, I had headed to an on-call room to get a few minutes' sleep before i was called to avert the next medical emergency that cropped up. Breathing a sigh of exhaustion as I sat on the bottom of one of the two bunk beds that occupied the space, I didn't even notice her lying on the other one until she let out a little snuffle into the dark room.

I looked up, trying to allow my eyes to adjust to the lack of light, and realised that the lumpy bundle on the other bed was in fact… "Delphine?" I asked tentatively.

I was answered only by another sniffle, so I slowly stood up and moved to sit on the other bed next to her. "Are you alright, Delphine?" I asked.

"Yes," came the only response, but it was so shaky and hoarse, almost as if…

"Delphine are you crying?" I asked.

"No," she replied, but the little sob that ripped its way through her betrayed her, and my heart broke for the woman, so strong, so cold, crying to herself in a darkened on-call room.

The logical person would have left her to it. It was obvious that this level of vulnerability in front of another person was definitely not her bag, but in that moment there was no logic left for me, and I reached out to touch her.

I had been meaning to get her shoulder, to give her a reassuring rub, but somehow my hand landed on hers instead. Then the biggest miracle happened.

She didn't recoil from me, like she had done that day in the stairwell. Instead I felt her fingers thread through mine, and she clasped my hand to her chest as she cried silently. I could feel her body shaking, but all I could see was the shadow of her outline in the darkness, and theocrat of one cheekbone illuminated by the light of the small digital clock.

I let her cry for a little while, running my thumb gently over her knuckled, and eventually her breathing slowed slightly and the little jerks that she made as she gasped for air got more infrequent.

"Do you want to talk about it?" I asked, my voice sounding alien in the still room. I was almost expecting another 'I am a rock' speech, so she surprised me when she started talking. I guess the darkness made her brave.

"It's just," she said, voice thick and croaky with the tears she had just shed, "it's just that I wish…" She paused for a second and I wondered if she was going to continue at all. "I wish things could be different," she said eventually. "I see patients every day and they are broken and dying and I want to make them better. I want to stop them hurting." I let out a little noise of understanding, but she cut me off before I could speak. "And yet all the tie all I can think about is how much I hurt too."

Her voice cracked there, and her body started convulsing again as sobs once more consumed her. I held her hand, and whispered nonsensical comfort to her, all the time in awe at the beauty of her unguarded self, at the privilege I had been allowed in witnessing it. After a while, her voice cut through the darkness again, bitterly.

"You know that this is not my first job as a Doctor?"

"I - what?" I was confused, not sure what to make of her words.

"I worked for almost two years in a hospital in Paris," she said, and I could only stare at the silhouette of her face in shock.

"What happened?" I asked, voice hushed as if any loud noise would startle her back into closing herself off.

"I…" Her voice cracked again. "My senior Doctor, we…" she trailed off. "It is not important," she said.

"I'm sorry, Delphine," I said. The pain in her words, her tears, the vagueness of her story. For the first time I felt like I could really see her, like I understood her fully and completely.

She sat up suddenly, still clasping my hand, bringing her other hand to my knew as I tentatively touched her elbow.

"Why are you sorry, Cosima?" She asked. "You have been so kind to me while I have been so cold to you." And suddenly even through the darkness I could see her whole face, the little freckle below her lips, the puffiness left over from her tears, the untold galaxies hidden in her eyes. "You have nothing to be sorry for," she whispered.

And then she kissed me.

It was soft and gentle and sweet and I'm fairly certain my heart just about exploded right there, feeling the chaste press of her lips against mine. But the wetness of her tears against my cheeks made me pull back. This wasn't right. Not when she was upset like this. Much as I wanted to kiss her again and again, preferably until one or both of us died from starvation or asphyxiation or something similar, I couldn't take advantage of her like this. With my head swimming full of regret, I pulled away from the perfection of her embrace.

"Not like this, Delphine," I said quietly. I was about to say more, to tell her that I wanted her like I had never wanted anyone before, that I wanted to try that again, many times, when neither of us were crying, but I was interrupted by my pager, which was beeping hysterically in the 911 alarm tone which let me know that one of my patients was crashing.

"Shit," I almost shouted as I stood up, and she looked at me, face blank, pretty eyes expressionless. I cupped her cheeks in my hands, then grasped her hands, looking at her intensely. "I'll talk to you later," I said urgently. "Please. Later."

Then I ran out of the room, leaving her in the dark.

/

I didn't see her for two days. The attending I asked just said she had called in sick. I managed to get her home phone number by charming a receptionist, but when I called there was no answer. I didn't leave a message. I didn't know what I'd say, and besides, some part of me knew that she wouldn't listen to it anyway. She probably regretted kissing me, I thought. Showing any weakness or need for closeness. She probably regretted it.

When she did come back in to work, it was worse than when she was away. The first time I saw her it was at the nurses' station. I greeted her timidly, heart in my throat, and she just walked right on by. It was like she couldn't see me, was determined not to hear me. She walked straight through me.

And I came to realise in those next few days that as difficult as it had been when she was cold with me, it was a million times better than her not noticing me at all. I had no idea what to do. Was she just embarrassed at letting her defences drop? Did she hate me for letting her kiss me? Was she worried that I'd go round telling the entire staff that she wasn't as Strong as she seemed?

I stopped seeing her in communal areas, stopped bumping into her in the halls. A nurse even told me she's requested a shift change even though it had been impossible. She was avoiding me, and where I couldn't be avoided, I was ignored.

I knew I had to talk to her, and I knew that it wouldn't be easy. So I waited until the very end of our shared shift when I knew neither of us would be called away somewhere.

Then I went and hid in an on-call room. I knew the room was on the route she would have to take to the locker room, so I stood there, door open just enough to see through, and waited. Sure enough, after a few minutes she was there, walking briskly, and just as she was passing by I leant out and pulled her into the room with me.

The whole manoeuvre worked surprisingly well. She let out a French curse and then stared at me in a sort of confused horror when she realised who her captor was. I locked the door.

"I need to talk to you, Delphine," I said. Truth be told I was scared shitless. I had been attempting to rehearse this all day, but now that I was here and she was looking at me like that all the words got lost somewhere between my brain and my mouth.

She didn't say anything. Just continued to stare at me. Eventually, I started speaking. "I know you've got like, this whole loner thing going on," I said. "And I know you think it works and that I should just leave you alone, and to be honest I think I should too sometimes, you know? I mean it would sure as fuck make things easier." I was getting on a bit of a roll here, and I could feel all of my confusion and frustration from the past months boiling up, jostling to spew out of my mouth.

"But you know what, Delphine?" I was almost shouting now, "it doesn't work like that. People don't work like that. You can shut everyone out and treat them like shit but it won't fix the fact that you need the, And don't pretend you don't, Delphine. I've seen it. So would you please stop being so fucking childish and just let me in?!"

I think I got a little bit carried away there, because she was still staring at me, but now there was anger in her eyes.

"Are you finished?" She said at last, and her voice was a growl.

"I think so," I panted, and at least I had the good sense to look a little contrite.

"Good," she said, low and dangerous. "Then I will thank you to stop pretending you know me, Cosima. You have no idea why I am the way I am. Yet you are determined to live out some fantasy where you save me from myself nonetheless." She was seething, tears of anger spilling from her eyes. Her hands were clenched into fists and she stepped closer towards me and I couldn't speak.

"You want to tell me that I should let people in? That I should let _you_ in? How can I possibly do this, Cosima, when everything I have ever loved has left me shortly after?"

She was still crying, a low fury bubbling in her voice. "Everything ends, Cosima. So yes, I protect myself. I protect myself from you and from everyone else because I would rather live alone than have to live broken. I have been broken too many times!"

And as she stood there in front of me, tears streaming down her face, eyes alight with rage, it finally clicked.

The anger, the tears. It all made sense. She wasn't cold. She was just afraid. This woman had obviously been so battered in her short life that she had at some point stopped trying, and then she had opened herself up one last time, a ditch effort, to me.

And I had left.

I looked at her, this wonder woman of fire and ice, and I marvelled at her. And then I did the only thing I could possibly think to do, and I moved forwards and kissed her.

I kissed her hard, tenderly bringing my hands to her face as I tried to show her that I wouldn't leave her, that if she allowed I'd never leave her. He lips were tight and stiff against mine as she resisted one last time, and then, finally, beautifully, she gave in.

I felt her kiss me back as her hands came up to tangle in my dreads, and then her mouth was open and her tongue was dancing across my lips, and she was sighing and moaning into me and I swear to god if it was possible to come from just a kiss then this was it.

She kissed me desperately, madly, all tongue and teeth and tears, and it was only when we broke apart for a second that I was able to look at her swollen lips as I wiped the tears from her cheeks with my thumbs.

"Okay," she said quietly.

Never have two syllables said so much.

I kissed her again, slowly, relishing the feeling of her tongue sliding against mine, and dropped my hands to run along her sides, to feel the gentle curve of her hips. She pressed closer against me, kissing me more frantically, and I gasped into her mouth as her right hand dropped down to palm my breast through my scrub top.

She moaned deliciously into my mouth and squeezed firmly before moving her hands to the hem of the to, pulling it upwards, removing the t-shirt I wore underneath at the same time. I groaned as our lips were separated so that my shirt could be removed, but the look on her face made up for the momentary lack of contact.

She was looking at my chest with such unrestrained desire that I could feel myself flooding with wetness for her, seeing how she wanted me. Her eyes seared into me, and I cried out and arched into her as she moved to slowly pinch my nipple through my thin bra.

Then she was all movement again. She shed my bra as well as her own scrub shirt and bra in a matter of seconds, and soon she was kissing me again, tongue dipping into my mouth, teeth nipping at my lips, and I wasn't sure which of us was moaning. Maybe we both were. She surged into me, hands clasping at my lower back, tits pressed against mine, and she backed me frantically into the door, moving her head down to suck and nip at my neck, both hands coming up to rub my nipples, pinching and teasing them until they ached with pleasure and the throbbing in my pussy became almost unbearable.

I was gasping and moaning, and she was making these happy little noises as she suckled at my neck, and oh god I wanted to touch her, but what she was doing to me felt so good that I could barely remain upright, let alone move my hands from where they were clawing at her smooth back.

And then her thigh was between mine and she was pressing up into my wet pussy and her head was down by my tits and she was sucking a nipple into her mouth and biting it, and I was begging her to fuck me, please, please, fuck me.

Then she did the thing that damn near broke me.

She pulled away from my breast with a final lick, and locked eyes with me. Then so painfully slowly, she sank down onto her knees, and I almost came right there.

She kissed my stomach, right above my waistband, and looked up at me through her eyelashes. And then she smiled the most radiant smile I've ever seen in my life, and reached up to pull my pants and panties down my legs.

She looks at my pussy for a second, at the wetness that had spilled down my thighs, and then she leaned forward and placed another gentle kiss above my hairline. I tangled one hand tentatively in her hair, and again she smiled up at me. Then she reached up and parted me with her thumbs, and took one long lick all the way up my pussy.

My legs almost buckled right there, but she kept me firmly pressed against the door as she lapped at me, owning to herself as she fucked me slowly with her tongue. I glanced down and I would swear on any deity you like that no sight has ever turned me on more than Delphine Cormier's head bobbing methodically between my legs.

I was gasping and groaning and thrusting my hips forward to meet her mouth, and my hand was a fist in her hair as she guided my right leg over her shoulder, gently opening me wider for her as she concentrated her attention on my clit.

I just about lost it when I felt two of her fingers press up inside me. She was sucking at my clit and I was gasping and crying and bucking into her, and I didn't think it was possible to feel this good but I kept proving myself wrong. And then she curled her fingers inside me and licked my clit as she sucked it and I came shouting her name and fuck and shit and words that didn't even make sense, and her left hand was stroking a soothing rhythm on my hip as I shook and groaned and clutched at her.

She rested her cheek on my stomach as my breathing evened out. She looked up at me as I ran a hand shakily through her hair. I pulled at her arm, and she stood up to hold me, eyes sparkling. I kissed her gently, reverently, and she opened her mouth for me, allowing my tongue to dip in to taste myself on her lips. She sighed, and whispered something in French that I didn't understand as I leant my forehead against hers.

"I want to make love to you," I murmured, and she looked at me with this total unguarded adoration that made me melt for her. She nodded, and I quickly led her to the sad little single bed pressed against the wall. She removed her remaining clothing, standing naked before me, tall and proud and vulnerable, and I swear in the hazy fluorescent light of this tiny room, she was a goddess.

"You're beautiful," I whispered, and it was the biggest and truest cliche in the world. "Lie down?" I asked.

She did as she was asked, and I crawled to hover over her, kissing her slowly, luxuriously. Her hands settled on the small of my back as I stroked her breasts, cupping and squeezing them, toying with her nipples until she arched into me, her body pleading.

I licked and sucked down her neck, and made my way to a firm breast. I licked it and sucked it and bit it. I felt the texture of the skin on my tongue as I moved to taste the smooth white skin of her breast, then her puckered aureola, then took her hardened nipple into my mouth. I delighted in the cry the move elicited from my lover. I painted her breasts with my mouth until she was writhing beneath me, moaning for my touch. Then I moved my hand down to cup her pussy and growled when I felt how wet she was for me, how much she wanted me.

"Please," she gasped. "Please. I need you to touch me."

So I did. I gently dragged my middle finger through her wetness and she cried out. I let out a groan at how slick and hot and swollen she was for me. As my fingers found her clit she moaned out my name. God, I loved the way she said my name.

I kissed my way down her stomach but she pulled me upwards again. "I need you up here. Stay with me?" She said. There was such vulnerability in her eyes that I leaned down and kissed her forehead.

"Anything," I said, and then I moved my fingers down to fill her. I thrust into her firmly with two fingers and her legs spread as wide as they could for me, and we shared sloppy open-mouthed kisses as I plunged into her again and again and again, fingers curling as her hips thrust up to meet me.

She let out noises with each thrust: little ohs and merdes and yesses and my tongue played with hers as I fucked her, arm aching but continuing to move rhythmically against her.

"More," she gasped, and I added another finger, sliding in easily in her abundant wetness, and now she wasn't kissing me any more, just panting and moaning and staring at me so openly. I reached up with my thumb and played with her clit, and she let out this cry and arched her back and I thought to myself how madly, how deeply I was in love with this woman.

And then her body relaxed and her arms came up to wrap around me and I kissed her all over her face and for some reason she just kept saying thank you.

/

It was much later, after I had taken her home and made her a cup of tea which had gotten cold as I ate her out on the kitchen table, when we were wrapped around each other in my bed tracing mysterious alphabets on each others' skin, that she turned to look at me, a dark gravity in her voice and said, "please don't break my heart."

And I knew in that moment that this brave girl, this beautiful woman, had ruined me. That no one else could ever come close to the way she felt pressed against me.

I kissed her sweetly for a second and hugged her tighter to me, pressing my face into the crown of her head.

"Only if you don't break mine."


End file.
